When Sam Harris Finally Went Off The Deep End

Okay, I just noticed today that Sam Harris wrote a book in 2012 that says there's no free will. Sorry if it sounds like I'm behind. Once upon a time some of us liked Sam Harris and thought he said a lot of good things. Now more recently he chooses by his own free will to write a book that says there's no free will. If there really isn't any free will then there's no point reading the book or writing it, and if there is free will then he's just contradicting himself. It's irrational either way, and that means it's worse than illogical. For a much more detailed argument see Objectivism chapter 2. Now guess who's singing the praises of Harris's book! Go ahead, guess.

Answer: philosophy professors! Of course. Mainstream philosophy professors at big name universities like Duke and U Chicago. Talk about chickens coming home to roost. They love it because this is exactly the kind of crap they've been pushing for 100+ years. And like any skeptical philosophy, it's self-refuting, because the writer claims certainty of his uncertainty. Now guess what his next book is going to be. It's a book that says as long as you don't believe in A god, religion is okay. In common parlance this is called New Age, but of course the roots of this attitude are ancient. So now that Harris has spent a lot of time and pages on reason, science and logic, he is turning back to the primitive mysticism that he kept mentioning but putting off. Imagine the flock that's going to come home to roost for THAT one. Some New Atheist. I am disappointed but sadly not surprised.

Saturday Inspiration

I decided to try out a new idea this past Saturday. I took some time to read from Ayn Rand's works out loud. I am doing a reading from The Fountainhead, one from Atlas Shrugged and one from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. The point is to try to connect Objectivism more with my actual daily life. If you don't read it, you forget. I believe I can at least benefit from this ritual until and unless I have actually memorized the books. After that, who knows? I've already found at least a few new insights. In The Fountainhead, I noticed that Howard Roark has no hobbies. Or so I thought. Actually, he has one main hobby. Drawing buildings is his hobby! (Cliff diving could be said to be his other hobby.) Of course it is often experienced as hard work, but he does it for the result. Basically, you should make your main hobby your career. This is another way of saying you should do the work you want to do, rather than just going through the motions at a job. Of course, Roark did have a job, doing manual labor in the building trades, as well as attending classes at the Institute. In his free time, mostly he drew buildings. To those of us who had cushy middle-class upbringings, that may seem a little crazy. But remember, this is basically what the author had to do. She made herself into a writing machine, because the novels she wanted did not exist and she was determined to bring them into existence. To take another example, in the early days of Microsoft Bill Gates didn't do much but Microsoft. Etc. Now I don't think the novel is saying you must be like that to be moral. It IS saying that Howard Roark is the ideal man and the rest of us owe so much to the few men like that. Isn't it worth it to find something you want to make or learn and really try and see what happens? Most people allow themselves to get distracted and never come close to reaching their full potential. And if you've already read the three books I listed, take some time to read them again. It's worth it. You won't find any other books like that.

"Ayn Rand is great because she agrees with me."

Note the quotation marks. Once in a while I hear this from somebody. Someone will say something to the effect that they agree with Objectivism because they already came up with it themselves before they read any of it. Well, I have it on good authority (Harry Binswanger) that 90% of it has never been said before. It took Ayn Rand many years and tremendous effort to formulate all of it, and she was clearly a genius. And you came up with the exact same thing, just in your own head, in your spare time? Excuse me if I am a little skeptical. I suspect that the person who makes this claim hasn't actually read much of the Objectivist writings. Try reading some! If you have read Atlas Shrugged then move on to OPAR. I knew somebody like that many years ago who I lost touch with. He found me on Facebook a couple years ago. But guess what! Now he is a total socialist/communist, basically the exact opposite of an Objectivist. There are no good arguments for socialism, so apparently he just felt like changing his mind one day. Rand doesn't agree with him anymore, oh well! ;P I was a little shocked but not surprised. It takes effort to understand Objectivism, people. You can't pick it up by osmosis. Even if you think you understand it, applying it takes effort. Remember, selfishness is not easy, people! Selfishness is hard!

(PS for those who don't what that means. What I mean is, you have to think to figure out what is actually in your self-interest to do. Selfishness is not just doing whatever you feel like.)

From Religion to Philosophy

First real post. This may get a little heavy - don't say I didn't warn you. WARNING: THIS POST MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME READERS. Okay, now I'm starting for real. I sometimes hear from other people that they tried reading about other religions, religions different from theirs, and they were surprised at how much the religions have in common. It occurred to me that this is a form of stepping back from the tree to try to see more of the forest. So if you will, I would like you to step back a little further for a moment, to try to get a sense of what this forest is and what its purpose is. There are more trees here than you may realize. A religion is one form of what you might call a belief system. The main purpose is to try to answer three basic questions: what is there, how do we know it, and what should we do? (I think I got that part from John Ridpath.) Religion is one way to try to answer these questions, with pre-set answers. Philosophy, on the other hand, is about answering these questions in a rational and scientific way. Religion is like canned philosophy. It's ready to eat, but, is it really that good? Can't we do better? Don't we want something better than that? Don't we need something better? Philosophy is about trying to come up with better answers. "What is there?" is the basic question of metaphysics. "How do we know it?" is the basic question of epistemology. "What should we do?" is the basic question of ethics. Ethics also depends on a view of the nature of man, that is, what man is, what kind of being he is, how does he survive (in general terms), and so forth. This can be termed meta-ethics, which just means that it comes before ethics. Philosophy also has two more branches: politics, which depends on ethics, and esthetics (art), which depends on metaphysics. So if you didn't really know what philosophy was, hopefully you now have a little trail map to give you some idea what it is, what it's for, and why anyone should care. Please consider reading some philosophy if you never have. I recommend starting with Atlas Shrugged, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, or For The New Intellectual. These books are not only about my philosophy, but will also teach you something about philosophy itself. The point is, read about it and think about it; don't just do whatever comes to mind or whatever you feel like.

More about this blog!

I'm going to try to stick to thoughts that might be of interest to other people. However, this blog will not be censored. This blog will be about anything I really want to tell you. This may include rants, diatribes, rambles, manifestos, etc. Often it WILL be political or philosophical. Occasionally it might be about computers or something else that I like. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it. No one's making you.

Hajimemashite!

That means "Pleased to meet you!" in Japanese. This is my shiny new blog. Basically anything that is on my mind I want to share, and is too long for a Facebook post will go here, and I will point you here from Facebook. I was writing Facebook notes but it seems like hardly anyone sees those. Probably a lot of things I post here will be things I was thinking about while I was out running.